I must have some sort of weird speech impediment.

I've come to this conclusion because when I tell people I teach meditation, they often respond with, "Oh, you do yoga?"

Meditation yoga do those sounds like the same word to you?

Me either.

But for many people, yoga and meditation are one and the same.  And while it's true that meditation is a part of a Patanjali's yoga, and there's a form of yoga in some Tibetan Buddhist meditation traditions, yoga and meditation are not synonymous and, sometimes, not even related.

You can be a very accomplished hatha yoga practitioner without ever having meditated and, similarly, you can be an accomplished meditator even if you can't touch your toes with a stick.

My first introduction to yoga meditation was when I was 12 years old and read Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda. I remember reading the book on my way downtown to Washington, DC on the subway.  There was something strangely magical about being underground and yet reading this book. I can't quite describe why, but it was such a neat experience that I would sometimes go past my stop just so I wouldn't have to leave my meditative inner state.

I studied with the Self-Realization Fellowship for number of years and then later, through his books, with Baba Hari Das (who was one of the teachers of Ram Das, author of Be Here Now).  When I moved to New York City.  I lived across the street from the Integral Yoga Center and right down the street from the Sivananda Yoga Center. In both of those places the focus is more on yoga than meditation, especially compared to what I experienced once I discovered Buddhism.

Most of the Buddhist traditions spend much less time attending to the body than they do in yoga, meditation being the primary focus. Any attention that was paid to the body was mostly done to enable one to sit more comfortably for hours at a time. The Nyingma Tibetan lineage, though, as taught by Tarthang Tulku, has practices called Kum Nye that would be familiar to anyone who's ever taken a yoga class.

In many ways meditation yoga are like opposite sides of the coin.  When practiced properly, time on your yoga mat can not only have physical effects, but can reveal aspects of the working of the mind and lead to a profound mental calmness.  Similarly with meditation, as the mind becomes more clear, the body seems to follow, and one can find, quite paradoxically, that by sitting in the lotus position with your legs like a pretzel for three hours you can stand up and find yourself more flexible than when you began.

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